OnionShare – A Tool To Share Any Size Of Files Securely And Anonymously

When we wrote an article about file sharing utilities such as Magic Womhole & transfer.sh most of the users asked is it secure? and where the files are stored.

So, we decided to bring one of the best utility that stores and share files securely over the Internet. When we dig on that, we came to know about OnionShare which fulfill all this requirements.

How are you saying, it falls under this category? Yes, it’s true because most of us know about Tor Browser which allows users to browse securely, privately and anonymously by implementing Onion routing in the application layer. Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network.

OnionShare also developed in the same manner and allows you to use the Tor network to send files anywhere in the world.

What’s OnionShare

OnionShare is an open source tool that allows you to share any size of files securely and anonymously through Tor network. It’s kick start own web server in local computer to store files instead of storing a files in third party file sharing service like Dropbox, etc, then use Tor onion service to make it temporarily accessible over the internet.

It generating an unguessable URL to access and download the files. What you have to do, just share the secret URL to the person who’s going to download, If you’re sending secret files, i would advise you to use Steghide to add one more security. The person who is receiving the files doesn’t need OnionShare and it can be downloaded through Tor Browser.

How to Install OnionShare

We can easily install OnionShre to Fedora, Ubuntu based distributions & Arch Linux based distributions rest of the users needs to build from source.

If your distribution doesn’t offer OnionShre package, then you have to build from source.

How to Use OnionShare

Launch OnionShare from application menu, you can see the output similar to below screen shot.

When you launch the OnionShare by default it will establish the connection with Tor Network.

Just drag and drop files and folders you wish to share your friends or you can add a file by clicking an Add button.

Once you have added the files, hit Start Sharing button. Allow a moment to generate an Onionshare unguessable URL.

Once the Onionshare is ready, you will get an URL similar to mine with .onion.

Send this URL to your friend through email or Facebook or WhatsApp, etc., which is suitable for you. Make sure you have to added additional security when you’re sending secret files.

Just past the URL into Tor Browser and hit enter, then it will show you the download link with .zip format and contents of zip file which including file size on pretty plain page. Click the link and download your .zip.

When the download page appears, it will automatically disable sharing then the URL will no longer be available.

How to Use OnionShare in CLI

It’s pretty straight forward when you using in CLI. Just type onionshare /path/to/file that’s rest it will take care.